A vehicle communication technique may be classified into Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication between vehicles and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication between a vehicle and a base station. V2V may be used for the purpose of convenience or safety of drivers who are driving since vehicles form their own network without the help of communication infrastructure while V2I may be used to provide a multimedia service such as a map or the Internet to drivers. Also, V2I technique may be used by a vehicle to transmit vehicle information to a server connected to a base station through the base station as well as to receive information from the base station.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing a process in which vehicle information acquired from an on-board diagnostics (OBD) system of a vehicle is provided to a server through an AP and managed by the server. FIG. 1 actually disclosed a process in which vehicle information may be acquired from an OBD system and transmitted to an external AP through a Wi-Fi module or the like and a server may check and manage the transmitted vehicle information. Generally, connection and communication between a Wi-Fi module and an AP may be performed in the following process. APs periodically broadcast beacon signals containing information regarding various types of parameter sets such as an SSID, which is a unique identifier, a current state, and a supported transmission rate, and a communication module such as a Wi-Fi module receives the beacon signals broadcast by the APs and connects to one connectable AP among the APs. When the communication module goes beyond the coverage of the current AP, the communication module may connect to a new AP through a handoff or lose communication connection when there is no AP near the communication module.
The greatest problem with communication between a vehicle and a base station is that a handoff from an AP frequently occurs because the vehicle moves at high speed, and the frequent handoffs may cause a failure in seamless communication connection and also reduce communication reliability. Accordingly, in order to solve the above-described problems with V2I communication, much research has been conducted on an algorithm for selecting an appropriate AP, and many techniques for securing a handoff have been developed. However, conventional techniques that have already been developed still have limitations in securing seamless connection and reliability of communication between a vehicle and a base station.